Agile Manufacturing - And Why We Don't Have It

Harrisburg, PA - I listened in yesterday to a global presentation on agile manufacturing. I've been complaining that Agile was designed and intended for software development, and this seminar claimed I was dead wrong. Or was I? I work in an all custom heavy manufacturing environment replete with long lead time parts, materials, massive equipment, robots the size of box trucks and a whole lot of very passionate human beings making it happen.

I was interested in hearing how a Canadian company in congress with several German manufacturers were able to apply Agile manufacturing principals and how they could succeed in affecting the cost of quality, total build time, and constant customization required by today's marketplace. The presentation's introduction directly addressed that exact topic, so I was hooked. I learned that in a fully automated assembly line, each robot can be centrally controlled to apply the customization needed as a product aggregates on the line. I learned that there is a software in use that is favored by the presenters that can not only manage all of these processes, but communicate available work load and work shortages between manufacturing facilities to balance production.

This is downright amazing, if, and it's a very important if, you operate in an automated environment. What if you don't. There are still a lot of jobs people do that robots can't do. Many of the industries where this is true are struggling in the face of today's market where mass production of single solution products are not a viable future. Constant customization is key. We need to retool our approach to design of manufacturing. Not just the layout of a factory, but the materials that come in the door and the parts we make with them. The speaker yesterday mentioned the Lego theory. And this needs to be applied to heavy manufacturing immediately. But how? The only record I can find of it online is a school in Spain a decade ago that had a theory. To be fair: if you have figured it out, why would you want to share the idea with competitors by publishing it? I know if my employer was adapting any of these concepts I couldn't say it here. I've interviewed several engineers from similar industries and they also had nothing official to say, but most proclaimed agile heavy manufacturing to be akin to a distant pipe-dream.

So then: how do you convince a global culture of engineers to design for modularity? To think forward on every part they design for re-use instead of use? How do you get a global culture of manufacturing to buy in and re-think how assembly lines work? To right a ship that lists, you need to take action now.

Don't dwell in the past.